


Parlor Trick Magic and Other Trivialities

by IngeniumNoctuam



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Community: rs_games, Fluff, M/M, R/S Games 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-18 19:25:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8173096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IngeniumNoctuam/pseuds/IngeniumNoctuam
Summary: R/S Games 2016 - Day 1 - Team TimeMagic glimmers in each of their eyes as for the first time they truly meet and suddenly realize maybe, perhaps, one day, possibly... they could fall in love.Or the one where Remus is a blind atheist throughout history and Sirius needs more saving than he's supposedly dishing out.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **Team:** Time  
>  **Title:** Parlor Trick Magic and Other Trivialities  
>  **Rating:** PG-13  
>  **Warnings:** Language, very brief mentions of abuse, brief mention of smoking, implied/referenced sex  
>  **Genre:** Alternate Universe, Fluff  
>  **Word Count:** 17,000  
>  **Summary:** Magic glimmers in each of their eyes as for the first time they truly meet and suddenly realize maybe, perhaps, one day, possibly... they could fall in love.
> 
> Or the one where Remus is a blind atheist throughout history and Sirius needs more saving than he's supposedly dishing out.  
>  **Prompt:** #63 "We do not remember days, we remember moments." - Cesare Pavese

_They are together on the couch, away from the lambent flicker of the single candle, and there's dust and rubble and dirt drifting down from the rafters above their heads. The debris looks golden caught in the candle light, stilled in time, and suspended in the leap of each one of their heart beats. They watch with warped eyes, big and glowing, as everything comes gliding down with the steadiness of a good snow, after each airplane tears through the sky with a rumbling shriek, leaving behind a roar of shrapnel and the silent screams of the dead. Not even the children make a sound._

_It's like the room is separate from the fixed linear timeline and circular arch of the Earth's orbit, away from the chaos of two nations colliding. They, on the half stuffed cushions of the half broken couch, know the grainy radio playing the warbling voice of Vera Lynn is holding each and every person inside the drop zone in rapture. Vera Lynn assures them they will meet again in a melancholy more promising than anything should be when the world seems to be crumbling above them._

_When the signal breaks and Vera Lynn's voice dies in her throat, they find each other's hands. They're rough from the brown snow falling from above and it's not exactly warm or soft. They squeeze each other's fingers tightly. They close their dry eyes. They breath in the dust._

—

Remus wakes with "We'll Meet Again" circling his head like a race car and a sensation in his right hand like there should be something there which he's gone and let slip. He doesn't know what he's lost this morning but it seems every time he wakes up now there's something he's missing. Sometimes his phone—it's usually by the toilet—sometimes his socks—they're usually balled at the end of his bed, kicked off in his sleep—and sometimes it's something else that he can't quite grasp, like a memory he can only remember the faintest etches of, buried in his deep subconscious. 

Whatever. 

When you're a barista the most important life question you have to ponder is whether or not management notices the extra shot of espresso you're taking for yourself. Sometimes you even wonder if the lady with the order so assorted it boarders on the edge of no longer coffee would notice if her drink wasn't exactly the way she specified, and if she even knows what it is she's ordering. 

But even these questions Remus doesn't feel he has the brain power to contemplate at this hour in the day. Instead he makes the sort of early morning half noise usually reserved for those disinclined to roll over and stop the whining of their alarms. He manages to turn his alarm off anyway, even to touch a bare foot to the icy abyss of the floor with well reasoned reservation. His leg hairs prickle and he hunches his back again, curling over his knees and wondering why he ever thought he could manage to be an adult, why as a child he had even longed for the responsibility and independence. Things change when you have to do taxes and make your own food, and fold your own clothes. Especially when you realize how much more expensive alcohol is than you thought it would be.

Remus rises, fighting against the tides of sleep deprivation pulling him back down into the bed. At least he can smell Marlene has already made coffee, bless her soul. Ironically she's better at it than he is. He greets her with a glare she's learned not to take offense to and he sets himself in his chair as if he would fall out at any moment. There's no point in fighting the headache so he lets it consume him, pounding against his skull and thumping in his ears like a drum. He gropes for a sugar packet and pours decidedly too much into the mug. Does he care? Not at the moment.

"You're looking awfully crappy there," Marlene says easily, grinning.

"I had a restless dream," he says as he stares with intent into the shadows of his mug. It's waiting very patiently to be filled, he thinks off handedly.

"Oh, what was this one about then? More farming? Or were you something exciting this time like a noble or a knight?"

"I wouldn't be a knight. I'd be..." In medieval times he hates to think he would be a serf. Maybe he'd be in a guild, perhaps a blacksmith... No, knowing his luck he'd be a serf. "Not important. I don't know what I was. I was just in a basement."

"Kinky. The dreams are finally getting interesting I see." Marlene raises her eyebrows and quirks her lips like she knows what kind of Things happen in basements. She's perceptive but not omnipotent. 

"No, I think it was in the forties, during the Battle of Britain. The kinkiest thing we did was hold hands."

"Still more exciting than your dating life at the moment," she sings.

"Marlene, you have the innate ability to talk about the one and only thing I don't want to talk about with you. Your senses come from the Gods, really. Now please pour me my coffee."

Marlene gives him a wicked pout. It probably has the ability to stop whole armadas in their tracks but Remus likes to think he's stronger than armadas sometimes, especially when it comes to talking about his non existent romantic exploits. He nudges his cup across the counter towards her with a look he hopes clearly says, 'Shut up and pour me my coffee you nuisance of a roommate. It's a wonder I haven't kicked you out yet,' in the span of two seconds.

He thinks it gets the message across rather well when she rolls her eyes and gives him what he wants. Oh it's so blissful when he sips; cliche choirs of angels singing as the clouds part and all that nonsense that doesn't belong on average, dreary Tuesday mornings inside his average, dreary flat with his spectacular, radiant roommate.

"You can do way better than me you know?" Remus says.

"Darling I know. I just like watching you squirm when I eat healthy food."

Remus sticks his tongue out and gags on the air. "You are a cruel person Marlene, cruel cruel person. Pronouns?"

"She, her. I like the piercing by the way. Though you know what they say, the only reason you get a tongue piercing is for sex."

"I'm a piece of hipster shit working at Starbucks. There's my reason."

Marlene pats him on the back like he's a child who's just done something extraordinarily mundane in the hopes of gaining high praise. He thinks it's rather unfair. He finishes his coffee in a sulky silence.

—

By the time lunch has passed with little more than drab monotony to remember it by, Remus is able to smile when he greets the customers and not stab his eyes out when teenagers giggle and give ridiculous names as if it's funny. He's just glad he doesn't have to call out Spartacus every time someone finds themselves a little more clever than they actually are. Now, however, he is a sparkling, ray of sunshine. It has everything to do with the shots of espresso he liberated from the storage in the back thirty minutes ago. 

Even though the customers are always too loud and their smiles too prescribed, he finds himself humming Vera Lynn as if her music belongs in the modern din of a cafe offering a wifi password on the chalkboard and drinks with names that sound more and more like they belong in the Jabberwocky than they do clinically rolling off a middle aged woman's tongue. 

When there's a lull in the current of caffeine addicts paying for his livelihood, he throws stirring straws at the backs of people's necks like their darts and watches their narrow eyed confusion. It's even better when they don't notice. 

He's smiling and humming, going over his plans for the evening—"folding" clothes, or just shoving them into his drawers, "getting started" on his résumé, or getting side tracked with tumblr and the ever tempting Netflix app on their TV, eating "dinner", or shoveling the last of that tub of ice cream in his mouth before Marlene can judge him. He wonders if in one of his dreams he could be something cool like a marauder or knight, something his faceless boyfriend seems to always be. 

He's contemplating the subconscious notions with which such dreams entail—does he consider himself a peasant in need of saving by a suave knight? Is he worth more than his social status or society's judgement? Is that what the dreams are telling him?—and humming still, ignoring the half grins he's getting from his coworkers, when he gets an order for a cafe mocha. 

He doesn't pretend to take his job seriously, unlike Ben at the till. Ben takes each order with a certain solemn faced reverence that curdles Remus' blood. Ben is also the worst flirt. Remus doesn't pretend his gaydar is exactly perfect but some of the most painfully straight people could walk in, backwards SnapBack and polo shirts on, and Ben would still hit on them. 

Whatever. 

It seems to be his motto. Remus half heartedly glances at the cup and sees a name that sends something warm and electric straight through his chest, lurching something probably important in there to a half second stop. The name is Sirius. Or he reckons that's what it's meant to be because Ben had written Serious, as in the state of being, like that makes any sense. It's almost as weird as his name, Remus, so he grabs a sharpie and draws the Canis Major constellation on the side of his cup. 

—

It's not like he expected praise, or even recognition, but if he had known this was going to happen he wouldn't have acted so rashly. The man, Sirius, is smiling at the cup then he looks up to Ben and gives him a wink and they're going on a date Friday because apparently they've been making eyes at each other for at LEAST a decade, or so Ben reports. 

Whatever.

He tells Ben he should probably learn some basic astronomy for their date. Ben laughs like he knows what that means.

—

Remus stares at the gaps between his fingers and the light shinning through the spaces between his eyelashes with withdrawn disinterest. It's Friday night. Sleep is an allusion and time is something meant to wallow in. The dimming LED attached to his fan sprays a fountain of bright light before dimming again lamely. In a way it's trying harder than Remus is. 

Right on top of his thighs, splotchy when Remus squints at the screen too hard, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is saving the world yet again, or at least her baby sister from the clutches of a singing demon, contemplating her own monotonous life like Remus is now. He nearly cries it's so relatable.

He can't bring himself to blink much less reach over for his cup of stewing tea; he opens his palm, concentrates on nothing in particular, and it's there, resting in his hand like a trophy. Remus has always believed there should be some little hint of magic, a ripple in the wind, a glitter of light reflecting across the air like the sun over a pond; something to alert the senses that very other worldly things are brewing below the surface. But there is nothing when he performs his small parlor trick magic: floating lighters, making glitter sparkle, flicking straws at people's necks with pinpoint precision. 

The magic, however useful in the day to day dribble of everyday life, doesn't give him energy because even he can't defy the first and foremost law of thermodynamics through sheer will power alone. His energy can't be created though it seems to have no problem getting destroyed. Or perhaps he's an inefficient system, losing everything to the forces of friction holding him back? Thoughts for another, less trying day he reckons.

He drops the empty mug on his covers with a light thump and wonders if he believes in past lives. He can't say for certain but he thinks the answer is a no. 

He closes his eyes for a very long seven seconds and opens them to the same room, not that he was exactly expecting a paradigm shift or anything that exciting, but an unscripted change or toppling of the silence fortifying him would have been nice. Remus exhales a great amount of air, concentrating again on nothing in particular. With an opening wobble that would put most on edge, the mug floats and twirls like an awkward ballerina as he contorts his hand gracelessly. 

It's so quiet he realizes distantly. Everything he has ever taught himself to regret and everything he is learning to hate swoops through him, down his spine, across his chest until he is numb with the failure of it all. He can't breath for a second. For two. He bites his lip and looks down on his fingers, his nearly raw nail beds, his stretched out sweatpants, despairingly contemplating his own wasted vitality though a part of him argues watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer can never be called a "waste". 

Eventually, after the realization presses against him like an unbidden lover for a strangling amount of time, he slips into sleep; it helps his nails prove to be less interesting than paint drying or grass growing. When he wakes he has the same feeling as when he's accidentally liked a Facebook photo from three years ago, stalker-ish to put it bluntly, though he can't quite figure out why that is. 

The dream is resting in the back of his head but recollection is vague enough he lets it go, and it slips away entirely. Marlene gives him a pout and closes his laptop and turns his light out when she walks in full of social exhaustion, bleary eyed from a missing glasses lens and a beer, or five. Remus falls asleep sitting up against his headboard with the very distinct idea that he has given this day up to the gnarled grasp of failure, though he reasons the pile of days that have gone down the proverbial drain probably can't grow much larger with just one more.

—

Ben explains darkly, in the moist heat of the storage room, all the horrendous things Sirius Black was: rude, careless, brash, insensitive, and he explains in even more gruesome detail the trials and tribulations he had gone through dealing with Sirius O. Black: no hand holding, no cuddles, no kisses goodbye, no homemade breakfast. The O in Sirius O. Black apparently stands for another star Ben's brain couldn't quite find room to remember. 

The only good thing about Sirius, according to a vapid narcissist such as Ben, was his good looks. Ben scowls and ruffs up some of the bags of coffee beans and his eyes glint in the fluorescent lights. Remus finds he hardly has to pretend to pay attention to keep Ben going. 

Ben kisses him later, slides his hands down Remus' waist cantankerously, sweaty in all the wrong ways, in all the wrong places. Before it is even over, Remus chuckles softly, pushing him away and explaining the enormous emotional duress Ben must have been in to lead to such a situation. Ben leaves a little muddled and confused and he quits the next day with another man hanging on his hip. No one can will up enough energy to pretend to lament the loss.

—

Remus is ninety eight percent positive he can't today. He told Marlene that when they had woken him up with a book to the chest and a grim expression directed towards the clock, the clock which was surely mistaken because if it were to be right then his shift would be starting in thirteen minutes. 

It is a Thursday and probably the most cursed day of the week. 

The clock had been right. He is twenty eight minutes thirty two seconds late in counting and just now realizing there is gold glitter around his eyes and on his eyelids for no better reason than Marlene's boredom. He repeats the words 'I can't do it' over and over again until he feels the people he passes on the sidewalk can sense it too.

People laugh. A woman gives him a look she probably thinks is the right mix of subtle and in your face disapproval. Remus frowns at her and flicks another straw at her neck and she rubs it and he thinks it's the perfect metaphor for the social injustices that will nag at society because of her existence, in stirring straw form. He's rather pleased.

He's grinning down at the counter and debating whether or not to throw another straw—well is it a debate if you've already decided to?—when Sirius peaks his head through the door and cautiously looks around the shop. 

He's got the expression of an apprehensive child, or more accurately an ex trying desperately to avoid a past boyfriend. Or so Remus gathers, using those excellent skills of visual deduction to fill in the blanks of what he can't gather, from the person in the doorway with that familiar dark hair and dashing suit. Dashing being totally, one hundred percent objective because what kind of moron would drool over a man he hasn't even spoken to, and knows first hand doesn't spoon their boyfriends. Remus sighs, glances up again as Sirius inches farther inside, clutching the door tentatively with his free hand, and finally takes pity on the poor soul clearly in desperate need of a coffee fix. Remus gestures him in with a soft, knowing smile.

"He's gone and found himself a sugar daddy," Remus tells him when the man previously at the door is most obviously Sirius O. Black and not some handsome imposter. Sirius splutters.

"Ben?"

"He gossips. I've heard all sorts of wonderful, amazing, delicious, then awful, terrible things about you." Remus smiles and he makes the glitter on his face shimmer on accident and he blushes so hard he's sure he looks like a rose gold iPhone. His face burns with mortification.

"Oh wow, uh, I'm sure half those things aren't true...?" Sirius says hopefully.

"You didn't hold his hand which apparently is the crime of the century." 

"He has tiny fish hands."

"Fish don't have hands."

Sirius isn't sure how to take the news that, no, fish don't have hands. He's caught between shock and hilarity. "Right... I mean his hands were all sweaty and damp and cold, like a fish."

Remus gives a charming smile, "Well that explains everything. Not only is Ben an unlikable person, but his hands are clammy. Can I take your order?"

"Oh!" Sirius yelps. His eyes are wide and he's blushing and it's really cute, but Remus thinks Sirius probably has a policy against dating his baristas now, or he should, anyways. "Sorry," Sirius says, scrambling with his hands for nothing in particular. He coughs, he orders, Remus gives him change, and draws Canis Major on the side of his grande chai tea latte.

"That's cute," Sirius says at the counter. He's blushing and Remus accidentally makes his glitter shimmer again and now he's really mortified, caught up in a tidal wave of red hot embarrassment. 

Remus swipes at his eyes and then at the rest of his face. It's utterly useless. The glitter spreads like a virus to every other part of his body that it comes in contact with which ends up painting him like a lopsided disco ball or an off balance stripper with clothes on.

"You can make it shimmer," Sirius says. He points crudely and adds, "I thought it was the light the first time, but you're doing it."

Remus' heart thumps. He blinks seven consecutive times and tries to find the words from somewhere within the completely empty cavern of his brain. "I, yeah, um, yeah. I forgot to take it off and then I woke up late and I don't mean to but sometimes it sort of happens..."

He clicks his fingers on the counter and thanks the powers that be it isn't the lunch rush.

"It's really cool," Sirius says, in awe. "I can only open doors and turn pages. It's boring."

Remus' laugh comes out a little high pitched and skittery. "I can only levitate things. Small things."

Sirius is gaping and he's probably about to ask for a performance but a co worker nudges him hard in the hip; he knows it isn't an accident.

"I'm sorry, I have to get back to work. But Ben isn't here any more so feel free to come back whenever."

So Sirius does.

—

_The sun begins its first movement with a trembling beam of light, warbling into the distance and ringing through the trees of a new land. Crickets are beginning to chirp in lieu of a captivated applause. Between the gold flutterings of dawn and predawn, everything is caught and frozen, unable to move. The dew is settling over the blades of grass, hushed and waiting for the symphony of light to end their moment of imprisonment._

_At the cusp of a dream each, shared though neither realize it, two boys pretending with all their might to be men grasp at the rough fabric of standard issue sleeping ware and scrunch their eyes closed against the warring skies of oranges and pinks._

_They stir together; one of them mumbles a good morning without much hope for such luxuries. The other bows his head and accepts the words as if they are true._

_It's too dark to see the water lapping at the river banks or the hundreds of soldiers snoring in their tents, dreaming of busty women or home cooked meals. The whole camp seems to stir with the unbridled longing each man is extolling into the night with such force of will._

_The two sharing a blanket by the banks of the river, a soldier and a highly unskilled mapmaker, long only for slender hands wrapping together and flat chests aligned like the beautiful parallels of military formation._

_"I think about the stars often," the soldier says softly along the crescent of his partner's ear._

_"How does it suite you?" the other asks in a tone as light as fog._

_"Not so well. There's nothing so unforgiving as the vacuum of space."_

_"Try the forests of the New World."_

_"At least they have good company."_

_He laughs at his own joke. The blind cartographer turns over and sticks cold, spindly fingers into the divots of his ribcage. They laugh together and, under the cover of a squawking formation of geese, they share a single second as one, indistinguishable from each other. They kiss breathlessness into the other's lungs without petty feelings of guilt warping the dirt beneath their fingernails with unease._

_When the Earth blinks again they are apart and solemn faced. The same day they march on with the troops and if they do exchange banter about stars and poetry and ladies neither are inclined to think twice about it is all taken as a joke, and they roll on. Like the everlasting winds of time, howling across deserts and over mountains until there is change so sweeping it engulfs even those clinging to the vines of constance, they roll on._

—

Remus wouldn't quite call it a routine, but the frequency and regularity would certainly suggest such a title. 

The "routine" is simple. Every other weekday and sometimes Saturday, Sirius orders an obscenely sweet drink with a grin at either Remus or whoever is working the till, they exchange light hearted banter Marlene labels as flirting, Sirius leaves with a cheeky one liner and possibly a wink though Remus can't tell what with his sight, and Remus winds up wishing his vision was attuned enough to check out Sirius' arse better.

Remus likes the elegant grace and simplicity of their thrice weekly interactions, though sometimes, when he catches himself in another stupor, in between thoughts and motion itself, he wishes maybe the routine would derail itself. He realizes he wants no hand holding, no breakfast making, no cuddling Sirius O. Black and all his inability to handle black coffee with the resigned acceptance of one used to the pummeling forces of unrequited longing.

He swallows this fact as raindrops slide down his cheeks and cling to his clothes and Sirius holds an umbrella half over their heads with one hand and a briefcase with another. Yes, the thought makes its advances right as Sirius is being the most gentlemanly umbrella mate there could possibly be and melting the frigid ice around Remus' heart at the same time.

"I could really use some coffee," Sirius says quietly, like an afterthought spoken aloud, even though the rain slaps the ground hard, nearly drowning him out.

Remus shivers and tugs his sweater around his shoulders. "If what you drink can be counted as coffee. It's hot chocolate and espresso. Hardly what I would call 'real' coffee."

"Rude! No more umbrella for you!" Sirius says. Unfortunately for Remus and his quaking shoulders, he follows through with that threat.

The rain hits Remus like a slap to the face. He gasps and shivers crawl down his spine, beneath the sagging wool of his ill advised jumper. The rain, hard pressed by gravity to reach the ground, pelts his face with persistent force.

He is tucked into Sirius' side the next moment. It's abrupt and warm and it causes Remus to lose his footing on both the pavement and reality. Remus thinks about the hair brushing his cheek and the hand wrapping around his hip and the body pressed against his back with electrically charged excitement. He shivers, again. He presses his nose into Sirius' chest and breathes in shakily. He nearly shrieks to let out the bubbles rising inside him. He aligns his side with Sirius', taking care to breathe in deeply everything he can from Sirius, the cologne, the pheromones, the rapid pitter patter of the rain or possibly his heartbeat; they fit together with the harmony of angelical choirs and covalent bonds.

"You're shivering Remus, are you okay?"

"I'm cold," Remus whispers. He wants desperately to be listening to the rain tapping away inside the heated sanctuary of Starbucks, holding a paper cup of not so legally acquired hot chocolate between his thawing hands.

"Let's get you inside," Sirius says softly, adding, "You're so thin it's no wonder. And amazing bone structure too arsehole," though Remus thinks this is probably not meant to be said aloud, not even amidst the cacophony of rain hissing with spiraling force around them.

"Thank you so much," Remus snorts and Sirius splutters. 

"I mean..." Sirius takes a quick pause to catch his breath, sucking in the thick, humid air with great effort and releasing it when Remus can only imagine his lungs are burning from the strain. "I mean objectively. You've got a well formed face is all and you're thin and cold and you know that's you. Objectively."

"Way to charm. Next are you going to tell me my eyes are symmetrical and my eyebrows are perfectly adequate?"

With a long huff, Sirius pulls him closer and sticks his chin in Remus' hair. "Well it wouldn't be wrong. Now come on you really are trembling."

Remus hopes he looks maybe a little adorable, not that the big nose and awkward limbs offer such luxuries in the grand scheme of things, but one can still hope. He sighs and squishes his eyes closed. "Sirius you need to count my fingers because I don't feel any."

"I haven't seen any fall off..." Sirius looks down, eyeing Remus' hands curled into the fabric of his suit. "That's ten. Let's get you inside, okay?"

Remus wonders when they stopped walking or when the smell of rain had crept up on him and clouded his senses. He nods. "You're being awfully nice."

"Well do you want me to stop?"

"Not particularly. I just..."

Sirius' back stiffens and he says in a crisp voice, "Yes well don't get used to it. I have trouble being kind to people."

"Bullshit."

"What?"

"Bullshit," Remus repeats, looking dead at Sirius' face, "You heard me. You pretend to be a dick all you want but you're a softy."

"I am not!"

"Oh yeah then why aren't you pushing me out into the rain again?"

Sirius flexes his fingers around Remus' hip, averting his gaze down to the puddles of rain growing on the sidewalk. 

"You could die," he says.

"Could not," Remus responds immediately.

"Could too."

"Softy."

"Shut up."

"Make me."

Sirius splutters. His fingers amble around Remus' back until they are both pressed chest to chest like the bound pages of a spiral notebook.

"Kiss me?" Sirius asks. It's as sudden as anything, delightful in many ways but jarring in most others, like the lurching halt of a train or automobile; it forces the beat of his heart to an untimely stop. 

Remus blinks twice. He can't hear anything over the roar of the rain. He trembles again, knees buckling so he has to grab on to Sirius' shoulder and hang on for dear life. Their noses are so close Remus thinks he could count the atoms between them within his own lifetime. He feels surrounded, engulfed, conquered by the waves of rain and Sirius' gentle breathing and the hands making an art out of holding a body close.

But then he asks, "How exactly am I supposed to shut up if I have to answer?" and he lets the moment slip through his fingers like grains of sand.

Sirius smiles and doesn't reply with words so much as the forced extraction of his hands from Remus' so desperately wanting body and they manage to get to Starbucks without getting any more drenched than they already are.

Remus drips with heavy water and undulating heaps of regret, weighing him down more than his soaking wet clothes. He feels like his limbs are folding from the pressure. His fingers shake with new found feeling and burning cold.

"Thank you for sharing your umbrella," Remus says.

Sirius brushes his words off like crumbs, ducking his head and turning a dashing red. "I should get going."

"No coffee?" Remus asks.

"No time."

They nod and shuffle awkwardly until Sirius heads off to the door with several backwards glances. He leaves. Through the ringing in his ears, and the numbing sense of losing focus, Remus has the feeling he should have said something terribly romantic like, "I would have said yes," or, "I think I could show you better ways to shut people up." But he only gives a small grin, waving meekly as Sirius takes heaving breaths and ventures tepidly into the rain.

There's something, though, lingering over his waist, where that hand had held him, tapping away and edging into his persistent stream of conscious. Remus keeps a firm grip on it all day long.

—

Sirius' next visit some odd days later is quiet and trembling, on the edge of disillusionment and complete abandonment until Remus cracks wise about the complete utter lack of skill Sirius has in the art of umbrella holding. The time after Sirius is renewed with vigor; he opens the door with a dramatic whoosh and enough magic to make certain school buses writhe with envy. He beams proudly at Remus and Remus smiles back. And then, when Sirius blushes and gets distracted by Remus' eyelashes and crooked nose crinkling with mirth, the door swings closed and hits him straight in the face. 

Really, Remus thinks, the admirable effort in which he gives to try and cover his laugh should be rewarded. He's hyperventilating behind his palm, eyes wide, and Sirius is stumbling, off balance like a stool missing a leg. 

Remus watches helplessly as Sirius flees, holding his nose because most likely it's bleeding. 

—

_It's midnight and they find themselves beneath a thick veil of fog, stars, and neverending darkness. They are in a field, grass prickling at the backs of their necks and light drifting down as if dust is falling slowly from the heavens, when the backs of their hands touch for a brief second that stills both their hearts, like the simmering wait in a symphony before the loud crescendo. The stars are watching, blinking with sad eyes, but Remus can't see all of them, even when Sirius points and explains the mythology; he just nods, smiling like he can see everything Sirius does and find it just as interesting._

_Sirius drops his arm. He looks at Remus as if he's one of the more important stars. It makes Remus blush intensely._

_"The Earth moves 'round the sun, they say," Sirius comments lightly, and Remus just nods like he's suspected all along._

_"It figures. Nothing is as it seems."_

_"Copernicus was right all along. The church probably feels a bit rotten about the whole thing right about now."_

_"I didn't know the church had feelings beyond the bounty of their own coffers."_

_"Oh you heathen!"_

_"You don't mind."_

_"Maybe I do." Sirius sits up and looks down on Remus. His eyes are big and glowing and so scarily close Remus trembles underneath his powerful gaze. "Maybe I'm just here to convert you. Maybe, if not for your enrapturing personality, I would never have wasted my youthful days away with you and instead waxed poetic about the Lord until he was your only savior."_

_"It seems to me you're implying as of now I have a savior at all."_

_"Well me of course."_

_"Savior?" Remus asks, gazing up at Sirius incredulously, "What have you saved me from? Boredom perhaps, but that makes you the most mundane savior to ever _save_ a poor peasant boy."_

_Sirius scuffs Remus on the arm and rolls over so his hair is brushing Remus' cheek. He's leaning in. He's on his elbows in the middle of some field and Remus finds himself nodding when Sirius asks for the intimate pleasures of his lips as company. Their lips touch and Remus lets his breath release like he's whispering a prayer, lets his eyes give into the call of darkness._

_There's nothing to be felt now, though Remus couldn't feel it anyway. Perhaps there's a breeze or even a strong gust of wind or a loathsomely thick fog of humidity. It's nothing when Sirius is bumping their noses together and figuring out for the first time what exactly is supposed to be done with his lips and hands. Remus' arms are limp by his sides and he wishes his whole life could be leading up to only this and nothing more; perfection then would be saved in a tiny little pocket of time._

_He's never had much in the way of luck._

—

Remus wakes decidedly guilty. He's near hysteria. He calls himself an idiot and many other deserving insults with a scathing tongue and bile rising in his throat. The mirror, which is already cracked, gives a tremor that threatens to bust the whole thing as he delivers vile promises unto his own idiocy. He spits his toothpaste in the sink bitingly and is glad he can't see himself clearly, even with his glasses on. 

Two doorways down Marlene hits her head on the doorframe and curses everything in her immediate vicinity. 

He cowers behind the counter all day, working on drinks and using the guise of many customers as an excuse to stay away from the cash register. The hands on the clock are giving him their best impression of a slow clap and when the time comes around he jumps and spills frothing milk all over his front. The door opens and he just knows. Sirius is electrically charged, prickling all the little hairs down his spine, on his neck, up his arms, a cool breeze in all the wrong places. 

He ignores Sirius with stiff backed unease and he goes back to trying not to contemplate the new subconscious implications of his dreams. Of _Sirius_ in his dreams.

He gets the order for another tall cafe mocha. It has too much espresso and the whipped cream is lop sided and some of his tremors transfer to the drink when he tries to put the top on, so he spills a good bit of it down the side.

"Worthless," he mumbles at his hands and the drink and his dream and maybe Sirius too for showing up. 

When he puts the cup down, a sad excuse for coffee and hot chocolate really, Sirius is right there and he just looks like he should be surrounded by starlight. 

Sirius smiles and thanks him and blushes and oh, he's so cute. 

It takes everything in him to only bite down on his lip and shove his hands, still quaking, into his pockets.

"You know I'd love to see, er, more of your magic sometime," Sirius says. 

Remus burns crimson like a fire, across his cheeks, and down to the pit of his stomach. 

"Well I can use it to flick straws at people's necks," Remus says, grabbing one with his two flicking fingers. A smile creeps up to his face and he looks down at the black counter again. 

"Oh," Sirius laughs, and he's red too. Fumbling, he nearly drops his drink, and the top, which probably wasn't on properly anyway, flips off. "Oh," Sirius says again, differently. 

They both awkwardly stumble over words and maneuver shaking hands until there's a new top and both are grabbing their hands away like seventh graders because their fingers touched once, maybe, a little bit. 

"I should get back to work," Remus says.

"Oh," Sirius says again, differently. "Right. Yeah I'll see you around. Here. Around here. Tomorrow."

"I can show you my magic next time too."

If Remus didn't know any better he'd say Sirius' tripping over his own two feet and spilling some of his drink on his shirt with the dexterity of a floundering two year old had something to do with those few words.

But he does know better, doesn't he?

—

_The smell isn't pleasant which is the first, and most disturbing, thing he notices. The second is that his bed is empty, and for whatever reason that's a disappointment. The third is that the humidity is thick enough for mosquitos to lay eggs right in the middle of the air and need not worry about their beady eyed spawn having enough water to hatch._

_Remus kicks the covers off and tries to remember why he would want another person in the bed anyways when he's so sticky on his own, until, that is, with a prelude of mumbled curses and bare feet creaking the floorboards, Sirius walks in and lays right on top of him._

_"I took a piss in a bucket. God help me."_

_"I think it's rather late for that."_

_"Is that meant to be an insult?"_

_"Yes."_

_Sirius scowls perfectly, as if his face is made for the most wonderful scowls there are and his eyes the most wonderful pouting and his lips the most wonderful kissing, though Remus thinks pragmatically he hasn't had near enough experience with the last one to really tell beyond a shadow of a doubt. Which is why he kisses Sirius softly on the lips and doesn't shove him on the dusty floor like he really should._

_"You've watched too much Shakespeare," Sirius mumbles, "Must stop before you up and kill me and then yourself for being in love with the wrong person."_

_"Love? I don't think my member quite has the capacity for love."_

_"Yes well your head I hope has more thought for out affairs than your," Sirius sent a glance downward then back up into Remus' eyes, "other head."_

_Remus howls with so much laughter the neighbors whisper the next day about werewolves. Or so he can't quite recall._

_He just recalls a, "sleep tight," hanging off one of their lips and fingers tucked together under a sliver of moonlight._

_Remus wakes with the inkling that there should be someone smothering him with their weight. But that's all he can really say for certain._

—

It's the twenty fifth time Sirius has come in here, but is he counting? No.

Maybe.

Yes. 

Definitely. 

He is one hundred percent counting because now the dreams involving Sirius have crossed into double digits and he feels even more perverted, if possible. He's trying to convince himself it isn't Monday to make himself feel better but it isn't working remotely. Until Sirius comes in with a bundle of colorful straws wrapped in a rubber band and a grin so broad he looks like he's splitting at the seams with happiness. 

Remus blinks twice. 

"They're for you," Sirius explains as if everything is suddenly resolved. He's standing like there's something behind the counter that belongs to him and he's just waiting for Remus to hand it over without asking. 

"Wow, how did you know I've been dying for some colorful straws. They'll fit perfectly in my juice boxes." Remus rolls his eyes as Sirius huffs indignantly and puffs his cheeks out in annoyance. 

"To spice up you straw throwing," he says with an elegant little hand wave.

"Right because nothing says discrete like a pink polka dotted straw coming at you from your barista." Remus enters a drink order into the cash register and tell Sirius the price.

"I haven't ordered."

"You're getting a tall chai teat latte whether you like it or not. Where did you get so many straws?"

"Craig's List?"

"Jesus they probably have STDs or something." Remus shivers. If he's perfectly honest with himself, and oh how he tries so hard not to be, he'll admit he thinks the straws are cute and thoughtful and perfect and he wants to flick them all and keep them at the same time. 

"Well fine if you hate them so much I'll take them back." With a pout more puppy than human, that will inevitably gnaw at Remus' conscious until kingdom come, Sirius grabs the straws and shoves some crumpled up bills on the counter.

"Don't be daft. Give them to me."

Sirius leaves with an extra number on the back of his receipt and a feeling at the back of his neck like two rainbow striped straws have just hit him with pinpoint precision. He doesn't know the rainbow straws were selected with care and fired with an ounce of hope that went beyond their apparent friendship. 

—

_Remus is nearly suffocating. He's gasping and clawing for a glass of wine that's never quite large enough, until, that is, Sirius brings him out of the room and onto the balcony with a firm hand to his back and a pinched smile behind his shoulder that is meant to apologize for such a senseless desire as breathing._

_"What's the matter with you?" he snaps._

_"I can't breathe," Remus says. He looks down on his shoes and tries to swallow. It's no use; the lump is still there. As dust stings his eyes in the hopes of provoking tears he realizes just how hot he is, stuffy really, sweaty and messy and nearly fainting from the effort of staying cool. He tries admirably to take off a layer or two, but stern hands stop him and even sterner eyes look down on him with reproach._

_"You're not in a corset. You can breathe just fine." There is a long withering sigh that makes even the most elderly of women cringe and wrinkle up like old plums. "A gentlemen keeps his chin up, Remus," Sirius adds with a touch of bitterness. He brings their eyes together with the crook of a finger._

_"Well I'm not a gentlemen, am I?"_

_"No. But you should act like one."_

_Remus is not much for believing in God but if he did he would pray for patience. "Why? All the gentlemen I know are arrogant arses," he says and lifts an eyebrow exactly as Sirius had taught him._

_"I brought you here as a treat!"_

_Remus is glad he's found breath enough to fill his lungs to the brink of their capacity and shout with zephyr wind type forces at his supposed beloved. "What a treat to be shown all the things you'll never have and all the people that have them, all of whom hate you more than you even hate yourself. Yes, what a treat. I get to look a fool and feel a fool and act a fool half the time without even realizing I'm the fool they're gaping at behind their demure hands and girlish laughs. What a bloody treat to be cast a part no one thinks you belong in and dance without half the steps and sing without the words, but audience to spare. Thank you so much, sir, for your generosity and kindness. Your reputation proceeds you."_

_"What are you on about?" Sirius takes a step closer and, as if dancing, Remus takes a step back until his back is pressed into the stone railing._

_"I want to go home," he says, "I don't belong here, with you, I belong in pubs that smell like piss, that serve proper amounts of alcohol. I belong, though you loath to mention it, in the fields, in the house, any where but here."_

_"Don't say such tosh," Sirius replies but his conviction isn't in it. He takes another step closer but falters and backs up._

_"I'm illiterate, Sirius," Remus says and for the first time he feels more than the usual shame curdle in his gut, "The words don't make sense to me. Everyone here knows Locke like the Ten Commandments and I couldn't recite to you a word of the bible without faltering. That's not very gentlemanly is it?"_

_For a moment Sirius is caught up in the wind and the stars and the gentle music ambling in from the party and the next his fists unfurl and a strand of hair falls into his face._

_"Not very," Sirius admits softly, though it's less damning when he gives a warm smile._

_There's no way for Remus to step back when Sirius shuffles forward and, like an elegantly trained peacock, bends down with his hands knotted behind his back to whisper in Remus' ear._

_"However I'd bet my horses you're the wittiest person at this party without having the pleasure of Thoreau eating away space in that brilliant brain of yours."_

_Remus smiles; it feels like it's his first since he was born._

_"Even those who are ungentlemanly can dance, can't they?" Sirius continues, brushing his fingertips along Remus' cheek in a fluid motion that leaves a trail of electricity crackling on Remus' skin._

_"Perhaps," Remus says evenly, "If I know the steps, that is."_

_"How about the one we practiced."_

_Remus shivers. Sirius' lips brush his cheek as he talks and when they leave the balcony there seems to be no need to breathe at all. Not when a kiss is lingering between them like another party guest and most certainly not when hands find each other with the rhythm of the song._

—

Remus hears a very foreboding thunder clap and reckons, with as much nonchalance as he can gather internally, that there will be no Sirius today. 

He's fine with it. He goes back to tapping his foot in time with the faint sound of Alex Turner's mellow voice and the whoosh of the rain, while the water boils and the tea bag waits.

Two seconds maybe three and the door opens; there is that easy feeling of warm blankets and black and white TV and tea bags dipping into boiling water. Remus just knows who it is without turning his head. He smiles faintly at the rush of breeze he feels hum at the back of his neck and tickle the tiny hairs all down his spine. 

He makes a chai tea latte with small rhythms coursing through his body, he wiggles his shoulders and let's what little of the music he can hear guide his body in small motions until he's blushing because he thinks he's stupid and the latte should have been done thirty seconds ago at least. 

He presses his fingers to his lips, sighs, puts the top on, and blushes harder all in another thirty seconds.

Of course, Sirius is waiting with a smile like he knows something, which makes Remus consider dropping his tea right on the counter and burning them both. 

"You made it to the music," Sirius says, oddly enough, like he's smitten with the idea, "You paused and stirred on the beat and you just..."

"Fuck off," Remus says. He thinks he might mean it but with Sirius he's never sure.

"It was cute," Sirius says, blushing, averting his gaze like he has something to hide. Remus decides to show him up and makes the very conscious decision to blush harder than Sirius.

"Again I say fuck off. What are you doing here anyway? It's pouring. You're all wet and someone, probably me, is going to have to clean up after you, you spoilt child."

"You haven't been the first to think so," Sirius laughs so robustly it seems like it's being forced out of him by a small string attached to his back. Remus promises himself he will never say those words, whichever ones that Sirius didn't like, ever again. He thinks it has something to do with being called a spoiled child.

"I came to invite you to a party actually," Sirius says slowly, "It won't be too wild but I figure I like you, I mean you're alright to be around, I mean that came out very, uh. What I mean is this." Sirius steeples his hands like he's trying to work out a business transaction and his face scrunches up for a moment before he's all beaming smiles. "There's a party I'd like you to come to. Saturday night if you can make it. Just bring yourself and booze if you want. You don't have to. Just thought I'd ask in case you've got nothing better to do."

"Well," Remus begins, "I can't say I have better things to do, but I do have one question."

Sirius nods with a smile. Remus is enamored, momentarily, by his perfect white teeth. He attempts to digress but finds himself caught up in a radiant smile a moment longer than is probably socially acceptable.

"Sorry," he mutters at the counter, "I was going to ask why not just text me if you've got my number." He raises an eyebrow and revels in Sirius stumbling over his own words trying to explain. He manages a very sloppy explanation Remus sarcastically gives him a gold star for and then, less sarcastically, promises to be there if he ever gets the address. 

Sirius forgets his tea and Remus shoves the address in his pocket, hoping Marlene will be able to read it for him. Who has handwriting like that anymore Remus wonders as the mid afternoon rush drains in like zombies. 

There's not much else to ponder the rest of the day except oh his impending doom and lack of a decent wardrobe and every mistake he's made since he's met Sirius and everything that could possibly go wrong in vivid technicolor and what exactly, "alright to be around," means.

—

Remus is dead set on not coming. He has an unsent text message, apologizing for not being there, waiting in the send box and seven other excuses rattling away in his head. And yet he's in tight pants and a plain sweater decent enough for public consumption.

Marlene had actually been able to read the handwriting, even though they had to make that adorable squinty face they do and Remus knows he does when things aren't quite big enough. 

"What could possibly go wrong?" Marlene asks as if Remus hasn't gone through an assorted list already. "Just have fun. Talk to cute people. Dance a little."

"No," Remus says harshly. Marlene worries their lip then gives up and tells him he looks good over their shoulder. 

"You're blind!" he yells.

"Yeah, well so are you!" they yell back, and he can't argue, can he? 

Even with his actual glasses on and the shrewdest of eyes he can't tell if his acne is there or not or whether there's hair sticking out where it shouldn't be or if his good side is his left or his right or even if he has a good side at all, if he's just thinking there is one because he can't see the full picture. 

Which is the second best explanation he can give for the pacing. He thinks he's at the right place because a couple just walked right in and there was decently loud music playing inside the apartment.

His first best explanation for the pacing is the quandary of whether or not to knock on the door. The couple hadn't but he only knows Sirius and not even that well. He paces. His heart stutters and he tries to inhale. He can't decide. He's breathing in thick dust with the over exerted lungs of a heavy smoker.

"Remus?" 

Remus squints at the person addressing him and decides he can guess well enough from here.

"Hi Sirius," he says.

"What are you doing?" Sirius asks and oh Remus is struck dumb with mortification. It settles in him, hot and sticky, and his face heats up and he shoves his hands in his pockets and he wrestles with words and he continues to burn like a newly formed star.

"Oh, you know, just-" He makes a vague gesture that he reasons will give no understanding of what's going on but enough to seem like he's conveying a message—"pacing," he finishes lamely. 

"I'm sure that's fun."

"Oh it's great. Really, just great."

He sees Sirius cringe under the silence and he himself shifts on his feet. Sirius is carrying an empty ice bucket and he looks really good in tight jeans. Remus wants to impale himself with the metaphorical pen tip he's writing down, and properly swooning over swiftly thereafter, each of Sirius' immaculate intricacies.

"Any particular reason you're pacing?" Sirius asks. 

Remus smiles like he does when old relatives pinch his cheeks and forces himself to make the conscious decision not to kill himself. The clean up would be a mess.

"I wasn't sure whether to knock or not so here I am, pacing."

"Oh," Sirius says like he was expecting almost anything else, "Sorry. You can just come in."

"I suppose if I'm here with you it doesn't matter, does it?" He laughs like he's crying.

"Ah, I need to pick up ice. The machine's broken on this floor. But go on in and I'll find you later."

"Great," Remus drags out under his breath with the whole hearted excitedness of a great aunt going through the process of yet another angry divorce. Sirius waves with a smile and Remus prays for rapture. 

—

Marlene seems grumpy to hear he's alone in the kitchen texting them instead of socializing. He pretends to be examining his drink with the utmost concentration. He's in the space between fitting and not, like a puzzle piece that's meant for a different puzzle but because the puzzle is only half complete and in the wishy washy state of haze and disaster that is an incomplete puzzle no one quite knows yet. 

The awkward meander to the kitchen had taken long enough for his hands to start shaking and his legs to wobble every time he took a step; half of them ended up costing someone their drink. He tries to pretend he's busy finding a drink and not crying because he doesn't know how to talk to people. It isn't an exaggeration to say that the first time he sees Lily Evans he thinks he's seen an angel. 

"Oh hi there!" she says brightly, "I haven't seen you before."

"Oh! Sorry, I'm Remus, Sirius invited me, I'm his-" He stumbles as Lily waits patiently with a small smile. Suddenly he realizes how ridiculous he is in an ugly jumper and wild hair and tattered jeans and he doesn't even know if Sirius is throwing this party or if this is where he lives or if Sirius invited him as a friend or as just another warm body to fill the apartment- "I'm Sirius' barista," he finishes so pathetically he stares down at his ratty shoes.

"Now I know where I've heard your name. Your the one who drew Canis Major on his cup." Lily is beaming and Remus is decidedly more uncomfortable than when he was found alone in the kitchen staring at his drink like a weirdo one minute ago. "Let me tell you, he was disappointed the whole Ben thing had been a sham. Was quite looking forward to meeting the person who had done that for him."

Lily Evans is the type of gorgeous no one should be allowed to attain. She's so radiant Remus is naturally drawn closer to her and yet he doesn't even recall stepping forward. Again it strikes him how painfully awkward it is to be found standing alone, a pillar of social failure really, at a party of someone he barely knows by a lovely woman he really wants to know. 

He nearly says I'm pathetic out loud before he can get a handle on things and quip about how useless Ben is.

Lily agrees and he's about to regret all his choices—because if he can't have a non awkward conversation with Lily Evans then what use is he?—when Lily tells him Sirius can't stop talking about him.

"I doubt it," he says gruffly, "I'm sure you're just saying that to be nice. Because I'm at a party and only know one person. Which is kind of sad," he laughs and when Lily doesn't he stops.

"I'm being honest. He's smitten. And looking at you I can see I was mistaken about Sirius' taste in men." She gives him a very candid appraisal that stiffens his back and causes his knuckles to turn white around his beer.

"Oh," he manages softly.

"His taste is much better than I thought."

She smiles like she knows him and for once Remus thinks someone does, exactly.

—

When Lily is gone he decides on a quest that could possibly distract him until he stumbles, probably literally, into Sirius. He's going to find the food, though why it's not in the kitchen baffles him. He inhales. It's sharp and heavy and he takes another beer to keep his hands busy, to take the cut out of his actions. He makes an awkward waddle around the party, skirting the dance floor and ogling the view of bright eyed London from the large glass windows. It's loud enough to wash away his anxious thoughts with white noise. There are so many unfamiliar people he can't tell whether or not he's walking in a circle.

He feels the residual sweat from the dancers and the sexy thrum of close bodies down to his toes and he breathes it in like smoke. It fills him until he smiles with the realization that he actually kind of likes parties. But when he nearly trips over the cords sprawled on the floor he second guesses his own better judgement probably lost with his recycled beer bottle in the kitchen.

—

When he finds the food he does understand why it isn't in the kitchen. It's a feast meant for two hundred or more that wouldn't fit anywhere else. His plate his sagging under the weight of his pillaged goods and he's insanely glad he's not the only one helping himself. 

He eyes the uncut chocolate cake with envy. He's not going to have it. It looks nice, even in the frazzled din of the lights, almost too nice, as if it's being saved.

"Mate I've been eyeing that thing too," says a short man beside him who looks in need of cake just as much as he does, "How about we both take a piece and then we can split the blame if it's being saved for something."

Remus looks over and grins with the thought that he's found his people. 

"Wonderful idea. Remember it was all yours." With an evil grin he takes an absurdly large piece and tries to fit it in his plate. Frosting is all over his fingers and a few grapes roll onto the floor but he decides to call it a success.

"Some team player you are," the man mumbles, "Fine then, traitor."

"Buck up. You'll feel much better when you've got some cake in you."

The man smiles and nods and they find themselves on a couch by the window.

"So Remus," Peter, as he says his name is, begins, slowly.

"So Peter," Remus, as he knows his name is, begins, slowly.

"How do you know James?"

Remus freezes in the action of doing nothing. Is he supposed to know James? Shite. 

"Um, I don't actually. Sirius invited me..."

"Wait!" Peter sets his plate on the floor and puts his hands out in front of him with awe. "Are you a barista?"

"Yes," Remus says cautiously, now licking the chocolate frosting off his fingers with insecurity.

"You're the one! You're the reason we're having this party!"

Remus shakes his head around his fingers slowly, wide eyed. He's not entirely sure what's meant of that but he's certain this party couldn't be for him without him knowing it.

"Yes! Oh you should've seen it. There we were in the kitchen and Sirius is whining, which isn't out of character, you should know that before anything happens, anyways he's an awkward mess so he thinks a party is a good idea to you know-"

Remus is slightly preoccupied with figuring out what exactly 'anything happens' means, or what it is exactly he's supposed to 'know' and trying to keep up with the litany of words coming from Peter's mouth in a whir of sound to even begin to see a strange man tackle Peter into a smothered silence. 

"Peter we've been over this. Remember the whole discussion on over-sharing?" 

Peter nods solemnly after a moment. Remus is thankful he'd been holding his plate of food in his lap. There's a strained silence and Remus almost excuses himself but then the man lets go of Peter and somehow Peter slips away into the faceless crowd of people. Remus likes to imagine he'll never be seen again and thus it's the beginning of the exciting murder mystery that is Peter Pettigrew's disappearance. 

The man looks at him like he's just voiced those thoughts out loud though he's fairly certain he hasn't. 

"Have you seen Sirius?" the man asks.

"Last time I saw him he was going to get ice...?" 

Remus fidgets though it's not so bad now that he has cake and beer to cloud the anxiety to near invisibility. He still traces the seams on the hem of his shirt with too much warped attention for a normal person. He debates whether or not to blurt out a random fact about space. "Millions of years from now the moon will drift out of orbit from the Earth and kill us all!" doesn't seem like the best conversation starter but he's uncomfortable enough to give it a shot.

The man is squinting around the room and then at Remus in a way that seems unwittingly intimidating. He asks for his name.

"Remus," he says.

"What?" the man asks and leans closer.

"Remus," he says again, a little louder, looking into the man's dark eyes with nothing close to their intensity.

"I'm James. This is my party."

"Oh! I'm so sorry," he says, emphasis on the so, "Sirius invited me but I'm only his barista. I'm sorry."

"Only be sorry if you break his heart. Do you dance?"

"Um." Remus hesitates and stares at his food. "No," he says softly, "Not when I can help it."

"Alright Remus 'I Don't Dance Unless I Can Help It' Lupin, what do you do?"

"Shots?"

James' smile is so wicked Remus instantly regrets everything. He's present enough to wonder how exactly James knows his last name, but he doesn't question it any more than he questions Neil Degrease Tyson or the lessons of Steven Universe.

—

By the time Sirius finds him again he's back in the kitchen surrounded by blurry shapes and laughing people. He's tall and gangly on his own two legs, slipping when he laughs too hard and red in the cheeks, like merry people in winter.

Sirius is an onslaught of the senses, cologne and dark hair and rich laughter. Remus smiles warmly and leaves behind his shot glasses, all turned over aggressively with pride. James is doubled over laughing in the middle of the kitchen counter as he knocks the glasses on to the linoleum floor with a dull thud.

"Hi," he says. Sirius says hi back. 

"Ask him to dance!" James shouts to no one in particular and somehow directly Sirius at the same time.

"Who got James drunk?" Sirius sighs with the unholy soberness of someone's who's missed most of the fun. Remus giggles instead of offering to remedy the soberness and instead of saying he got James drunk off his arse with enough tequila for a Cinco de Mayo party. 

"You did not do shots with him."

Remus' grin falls. "Y-Yes?"

Sirius stares blankly and Remus unhappily backs out of his personal space. It occurs to him this is only the second time there hasn't been a counter to separate them. He's unnerved and excited by the proximity and he wants more of it but Sirius is looking anything besides amenable to an invasion of his personal space.

"You did shots with James. And you're still standing."

"Somethings got to help me cope with the mundane day to day of a barista and it's not tea, as unpatriotic as that sounds. Tea tends to refine the sense not numb then. And besides, despite how many books I read, I'm not completely dull."

Sirius looks at him and at the floor and at James with something Remus hopes isn't begrudging acceptance. The next moment, he's shaking with laughter and little guffaws are escaping his mouth with the force of an apocalyptic wind, knocking the sense and better judgement out of anyone who's close enough to hear, including Remus.

"Lupin," Sirius says as if it's the one word that will give him the breath he needs, "I never thought for one second you were boring."

And then Remus is considering calling the paramedics because Sirius is making the most uncomfortable wheezing noises he's ever heard at his expense. 

"Ask him to dance!" James shouts from the kitchen and this time Remus isn't so sure which one of them he's talking to.

Sirius looks up at him with wide watery eyes and Remus finally asks, "Dance with me?" in a voice hollow of any remorse. 

"There's nothing I'd rather do," Sirius says right back.

Remus thinks it's a lie. He also thinks aliens are real and at least one member of parliament is a reptile in disguise and the moon is scary. He decides not to question the declaration, though lacking in common sense it may be, and instead grabs Sirius' hand.

There's nothing quite so warm and fitting as another person's hand. For once, for the first time in possibly his life, Remus feels like he has just found that missing piece. It may be selfish, though he tries to reason it's not, but he doesn't let go of his missing piece the rest of the night. And for whatever reason Sirius doesn't stop him.

When they dance there are hands on him, down his back, around his waist, through his hair, on his hips, and there's heat, like burning lightbulbs, dangerously close. It's dark and they dance and when it's darker they talk.

Sirius works at a law firm that represents clients who can't pay. (Remus calls him Matt Murdock but Sirius shakes his head, saying he's more of a Foggy Nelson). He detests jelly beans. He loves most other sweet things. He can set off fireworks anywhere without getting caught. He once put a live frog in his mouth on a dare and was sick for a full week after, though no one knows if it was the frog or the cake he ate off the floor of his own volition the very same day. He owns a motorcycle he's made himself and claims he can make it fly. He can play the tuba.

"I wasn't interested in getting girls and I thought to myself what's the best way to get them away from me. Tuba it was."

They're laying side by side on someone's bed, whispering like children in the dark of night and the absence of a party. It's been hours. It feels like days. Remus is beyond tired when he touches his lips to Sirius' cheek and asks if he should go. They are, in a way, like the pages of an old book, bound together on the bed under starlight and a ceiling fan and a drifting fog of unsettling obscurity. Sirius says he better not even think about leaving. 

So Remus doesn't.

—

_The sweet warmth of the sun drifts down with the lassitude of very stubborn honey. They are watching as a crew works around them, all as if they are part gear, cogs to a well oiled clock or members of a single conscious. Remus is in awe. Sirius explains lightly everyone's job though half the words Remus doesn't even remotely understand. He couldn't point to the stern of a ship much more the jib or quarterdeck._

_He likes the lackadaisical whimsy Sirius puts into the back story of each crew member. So and so was saved from the jaws of a squid and her husband found in the belly of a whale skeleton seventy five nautical miles away from civilization._

_"How are you going to tell the story of how we met?" Remus asks, when the sun is an inky smudge on the horizon and the sea is a completely terrifying boundless infinity. Sirius settles his trembling vibrato and places his hand conspicuously close to Remus'._

_"I'll tell the truth," he says, "I saved a royal scientist from a life of drudgery by kidnapping him and using his wily whits to figure out longitude before even Harrison could polish a gear."_

_"That's so boring though," Remus says and pouts like he means it._

_Sirius grabs his hand roughly and when he leans in his breath smells like rum and adventure, "No one else gets to hear the exciting bits."_

_"And what, pray tell, are the exciting bits?"_

_"Well there was a seduction of sorts-"_

_Remus snorts derisively, "If that's what you call a seduction then I think men are doing something wrong with the flowers and the flirting. They should instead win their partners over with open hostility and spilled drinks right down their robes. Or perhaps, even better, by groping them under the guise of friendly perving in the heat of battle."_

_"I don't know why I haven't tossed you over board yet."_

_Remus considers this and Sirius leans back on his hands; one arm is sneakily hidden behind Remus' back in a show of near affection. It feels like the breeze is suspended in time right in front of them as gentle waves rock the boat like its a baby's crib and the crew members shout insult and instruction with the same light hearted nonchalance._

_"Maybe because your seduction paid off. And then the really exciting bits came to pass."_

_"Ah, so you admit I'm an expert seducer."_

_Sirius raises a lewd eyebrow and his eyes twinkle in the sunset, rimmed black with charcoal._

_"Careful," Remus says, "I know how to handle a pistol."_

_Sirius leans in very carefully, eyeing the crew steadily before nudging Remus' cheek with his nose and whispering, "Oh I know you can."_

_Remus smacks him so hard Sirius falls back onto the deck with a loud thump. He isn't sure if it's his imagination but it seems like the sea breathes with his laughter. Suddenly, the dark depths of the ocean don't seem so unforgiving, and with the near audible persistent tick of a sturdy clock to tell the time by he doesn't feel so lost, in the fabric of time or space._

—

When Remus wakes up he's under warm covers and just now realizing there's a collection of band posters creating a messy collage of the walls. It's the kind of organized chaos one would expect in the den of an evil mastermind and not a kind hearted attorney. Remus decides he will never make sense of Sirius Black and that's that.

His liver's performing dark arts in his mind and stomach, sucking the color from the room every once in a while to remind him of those tequila shots he thought had been fun and spontaneous enough to warrant another invitation. And yet, even with the ever present threat of alcohol poisoning, he's wearing his clothes; always a good sign after copious drinking. Another nausea attack hits him in the gut like a fist; he sweats through his clothes, down his back, between the sticky folds of his body. Oddly this hangover isn't nearly so bad as it really ought to be.

He's alone in bed, a bed not his own, and admonishing himself for wearing Christmas socks in the middle of July especially when he's Jewish, right as Sirius pokes his head round the door like a shy puppy.

"Morning," Remus says croakily.

"You're up! I thought you'd be there forever and then I'd have to kiss you awake."

"Mm." Remus shifts on his side and closes his eyes again. "You may have to do that anyways."

It shouldn't be so surprising that Sirius really does.

Sirius kisses like time is an invention, allowing them infinity, without need or pressure and he kisses softly enough to steal Remus' breath. With his whole body, soft lips and wide hands and a strong chest, he takes to charting Remus' person like heavenly constellations, using everything to map all the details, from the moles to the freckles to the scab on his knee. The kiss has a sort of importance Remus can't quite put his finger on; it makes the whole thing seem incredibly damning and final. Yet there's sweet warmth in the pockets of his body because when Sirius kisses he does it as if he's giving a part of himself away in the process, like they're a slotting together to become one. It's like they're about to fall asleep and wake up at the same time, and in the moment it makes rather remarkable sense.

Sirius stops kissing like he can't handle such majesty any more. Remus knows this is only a smilie because his kisses really aren't all that spectacular. He appreciates the solemn reverie in which Sirius closes his eyes nonetheless.

"Oh gosh wow," Remus says and immediately regrets it. He blushes and pulls the covers up to his chin.

"Oh gosh wow is certainly right," Sirius replies lightly. 

"I had a dream of you," Remus says, when there's nothing else to say, though that's not entirely true; he can talk to Sirius about anything as unimportant as rocks and still feel important and interesting, "You were a pirate. You were gorgeous."

Sirius' eyes widen and his mouth opens and he's on the brink of an outrageous smile and he's grabbing for Remus like he's something important to hang onto. "I had a dream I was a pirate and you were something else. Something beautiful without a title. You were you and I was me and you made me feel perfect." He hardly needs time to consider his following words but he takes it anyway. "Actually I've had a lot of dreams like that. And I'm hoping maybe you have too."

"I think maybe I have," Remus says. He accidentally makes Sirius' hair float with the gentle pull of his invisible magic, as if gravity's finally gone soft from so many years of continuous use. He kisses Sirius on the lips to make up for it. "I think maybe I have," he says again. And finally Sirius joins him under the covers.

—

"No one ever carries me," Remus explains sincerely, "They're always like, 'You're too tall,' or, 'Last time you bit my neck.' Silly things like that."

"Right," James murmurs with the express interest of finishing the conversation. Remus can tell he sees Sirius holding him up by the arse. His effort to sustain the conversation is honestly admirable. It's the sign of a true friend, to be able to hold a near pleasant conversation with your best friend's new boyfriend while said best friend has said boyfriend on their back and is holding him up by his bum. True friendship indeed. Marlene, he knows, would probably talk about philosophy for hours in the same position but they've always had perverted tendencies he tries not to dwell on. 

"Don't look so squeamish. I've touched your arse plenty of times," Sirius says like its something he's intensely proud of. 

"It's just. Remus, mate, you're one hell of a drinker but you're just." James pauses and Remus raises a challenging eyebrow. "You're so tall it looks like you're some sort of freak of nature, the two of you all..." James makes a weird gesture in the air like he's crushing toy cars with his bare hands and a face that looks suited for a teenager forced to watch the miracle of life video in reverse.

As it happens Remus looks down right as Sirius glances up, in time for a look of decidedly wicked understanding to pass right through them. Sirius charges forward and Remus bats James with his hand. They make strange monster noises until James is shrieking and they're drinking his coffee together. They splutter most of it back on the counter when giggles inevitably consume them with the wrath of crashing waves, crumbling sand castles. 

It's warm and perfect and Remus doesn't want there to be a rest of the day, but sadly there always is. Though later, in an idle half sleep, he won't be able to recall any of it.

—

Now he's slightly embarrassed to be wearing the green apron, to stand expectantly behind the counter with a chai tea latte waiting in front of him, to give a large smile. He fidgets nervously, wondering thoughtfully what it means to be a barista in the modern world, how it translates to decades ago, hundreds of years ago. Sirius is still saving people and he's still doing nothing. He drops his head down and stares at the laces of his shoes until they're blurry and he can't get a good sense of them any more.

"You know I googled what it means to have the same dreams."

Remus blinks. He looks up and sees Sirius standing with the beginning of a very long winded something ready to pour out of his mouth. "Hi Sirius. It's great to see you again too. Sorry I haven't texted I've just been dealing with the crippling anxiety that makes me think you don't want to text me, thanks for asking. Yes your excuse for not texting is lovely. Thanks for that."

Sirius brushes the statement off and Remus crumples a little.

"I think it means we've had passed lives together. Some places say it means we're soulmates but they have the most ridiculous stories, all click bate, all happily ever afters. Hetero nonsense. But I think we have had lives together. You had the dream about the Pride and Prejudice style party, yeah?"

"The one where you yelled at me because I couldn't breathe? Yep sounds familiar."

"I apologized. Anyway I was thinking it was odd we only remember bits of it and then it hit me! Maybe we're remembering our happiest moments together. Maybe there's a reason for all this. Well I did some more research and basically I think we're destined to cross paths. Not something as silly as soulmates but we'll always find each other. I don't like the idea of being controlled much, that somehow we're always going to end up together, always the same. But maybe some lives we can be happy together. Maybe we remember those bits."

"Or maybe you're a nutter like everyone else on the Internet."

Remus has the feeling he's said something wrong. Sirius smiles widely and grabs his drink. 

"You're probably right. I'd better go."

"I'm sorry," Remus says, "I don't know what I said but I'm sorry."

Sirius shakes his head and turns so that Remus can hardly hear him say, "You didn't say a thing."

Which, Remus thinks, is probably the problem.

—

He contemplates the ever expanding universe with the finite knowledge of a man trapped in his bathtub on a dreary Thursday evening, and a half smoked joint dusting the floor with blackened ash right below his limp hand.

The bathroom is the color of grey mist and splotchy dead skin. It rings true to the straight out of college stereotype that haunts Remus' waking dreams. The tap is rusty and he is certain the porcelain toilet bowl was not originally the eggshell, cream monstrosity of a color that it is now. 

It is of the worst inconvenience that the bath water has turned itself lukewarm and that there are no more bubbles inside the bath. There are some lying on the floor half dying under the pressure of gravity and the equal and opposite force being exerted by the floor on their mailable faces. 

Remus again contemplates the universe and the other universes and the other dimensions and the fabric of space time and whether or not a single text can rip a hole in all of those things.

Eight words. "Sorry, can't come tonight. Got a big case." 

Remus' phone is somewhere between the toilet and the wall, slumped against the pale blue tiles like a soldier resigned to an early death. 

Remus is naked in a lukewarm bath and nearly tipsy on a bottle of extremely cheap wine when there's a knock at the door.

He's wearing a floral print bath road that belongs to Marlene and nursing a fresh bruise on his knee when he finds Sirius holding takeout and a drooping flower in the hallway.

"I was trying to be romantic but I got into a fight and it got a little damaged."

Remus takes the rose, cliche though it may be, and the split lip and bruises in stride. He puts pants on, leaving the bathrobe, and gets a first aid kit; he makes them both tea out of habitual instinct. 

Sirius is shaking with calm. He's a suppressed hurricane waiting to be released from the folds of his skin and the bones of his skeleton. Sirius crosses his legs like he's expecting a royal decree and not a plaster across his cheek bone.

"I wanted to do MMA once," he says, "I got into a lot of fights because I thought it would help me practice and I thought if I got hurt enough I wouldn't feel anything else."

Remus smiles. He has Sirius' hand in his own, tending to the bloody skin, ragged from violence and pain, like the breath of a dying man.

"Damn that's poetic."

Sirius stops shaking and laughs tightly. "Yeah."

"What didn't you want to feel?" Remus asks quietly. His voice breaks and he blushes softly.

"I ran away. Properly. Not just some drama where I came back from my best mates house after a, a day of crying and blabbing. I left. I left my brother." Sirius stutters like he wants to say more, like he doesn't know the words to his own story. Remus can't, for a long time, figure out what to say next.

"Why did you leave?" he asks finally. 

In the back of his mind he likes to think he's a medical surgeon, very professional with an unwavering voice and unwavering hands. The reality is his voice shakes because he isn't sure if he's asking the right thing at the right time and his hands are steady enough but his plasters are lopsided because he can't quite see where best to put them.

"Everything. They wanted me to be so much, only the things that were right in their minds, granted. They gave me anything I wanted as long as I was their good little boy. Everyone said I was so spoiled but I would've given it all away, every toy or video game or exotic pet if they would just tell me once they loved me for who I was.

"And I didn't expect some grand-" Sirius sniffs and they both don't mention the tears trembling in his eyes. "-some grand proclamation. Just something short and sweet. For me. Not the me they wanted me to be."

Remus says nothing. He rubs his thumb along Sirius' knuckles, waiting until he can find his composure and look Sirius in the eye. It takes some time, some doing he must admit. There's nothing so uncertain and absurdly breakable as the shifting terrain of another's deepest feelings.

"They gave me piano lessons and writing lessons and Latin lessons. Who even needs to know Latin? They put me in formal clothes and showed me off and hit me when my posture wasn't good enough. Remus they hit me and I didn't think it was all that bad until I saw how loving James' family was."

Remus looks up at Sirius. He says he's so sorry. He gets their tea. He lets Sirius curl into his side. He eases time by with the careless grace of a once forgotten ballerina. He says things he can't recall. He touches Sirius' face with care. He feels the aches in Sirius' chest and he can honestly say he has no idea what to do except feel the aches too. He doesn't ask why me, why did you come to me with this, of all people. He doesn't even ask why he got in a fight.

He asks about his brother instead.

"Regulus ran away too. We are... not so close. But I want to be. We have lunch now and again and he smiles sometimes but he's a bit..."

"Angry that you left him?" Remus says. He flinches when the silence presses hard on his shoulders; he's near certain he's said the wrong thing, crushed it all with his awkward fumbling.

"Yeah. He ought to be."

Remus doesn't give petty encouragements and Sirius doesn't ask for them. They sit as if they are waiting for something ordinary like the start of a football game or the doorbell to ring. They sit calmly and the hurricane in Sirius subsides. They sit with the nestled hope they can sit like this again, two people who know the inner workings of each other like they know the intimacies of their own passwords or the multiplication table. They sit until Sirius bursts out laughing and wheezes a sentence that sounds an awful lot like, "You comforted me in boxers with unicorns all over them!"

"Oh," Remus says lightly, "Is that what they are? Yes then I suppose I did."

He kisses Sirius on the nose. And Sirius doesn't seem to mind at all.

—

_There is no room between them, which is a good thing because there ought not to be a single breath residing where warmth and touch should be._

_Snow is falling precariously from the tree branches and winter is breathing with them, in their every breath there is a white frost and in their every movement a rigid frozenness they can't resent too much when it allows them to be so close together._

_The time is three thirty four on a Thursday in December, 1976. Remus sees it on the face of his watch, though it's clotted with snow, ticking faintly through an empty forest._

_He's cold at the tips of his body, his toes, his noes, his fingers. Sirius is a brimming red color all over his face and down to his chest; more importantly he's cute. Wool scarves scratch their necks and noses and snow seeps into their socks. Somehow they don't detest the weather one bit._

_"Wonderful winter we're having this year," Sirius says lightly. Remus presses Sirius' back into the tree trunk until he can't smirk any longer, until his fingers dig into Remus' jacket for something he needs._

_"You think that's the most important thing to mention right now?" Remus asks, slowly._

_"Probably not. But you know I never have found I like to do what's expected of me."_

_Remus hums absently, gazing at the bob of Sirius' Adam's apple as he pushes his body against Sirius again, so even the thick winter coats can't hide his intentions._

_"You'll die early not doing what you're told. If you don't eat your vitamins, brush your teeth, who knows what will come of you."_

_"I hardly think-" Sirius gasps with the intensity of a gust of wind. He wraps his arms carefully around Remus' back and tries his hardest to remember he's supposed to be collected, calm as a snow drift. Remus doesn't make it easy- "I hardly think cavities will be the end of me." Sirius shutters._

_"You haven't an ounce of self control left in you. If it's not the cavities then you'll be your own undoing," Remus says and bumps their noses together with a melting smile._

_"Who needs self control and silly survival instincts."_

_With graceful ease, and practiced coordination, Sirius slips his hands in Remus' coat pockets and pulls him forward roughly, spinning him around for a whirling second, and knocking their foreheads together with the over eagerness of a child._

_He whispers, "All you need is love," and kisses Remus before he can be hit or laughed at or more likely cursed into oblivion. Remus lets him. They breathe heavily into each other's mouths and down each other's spines, pushing more snow off the tree branches and exploring the depths of their woolly coats with numb fingers coming alive as tingles spread down their nerve endings._

_In the space between the start and close of one second Remus loses his natural instinct of self preservation to the wonderful torrents of Sirius Black._

—

The dream fades readily, like it's trying to escape an approaching onslaught. Remus thinks it's alright because reality is better than dreams anyways. He opens his eyes expecting something and ends up coming extremely short. 

He resigns himself to a day of tedium and endless loops. Without a soft body next to his, smelling of sweat and sex and chocolate syrup if he remembers last night properly, he isn't sure the rest of the day will be quite worth living to the fullest extent, meaning another Firefly marathon is waiting for him and his limp lips to murmur along with every line. 

It takes the time of a single, finite second for Remus to mentally prepare himself for the burden of fixing his own shitty breakfast and cuddling his own unraveling body and holding his own perceptually cold hand. 

Sirius is not with him and he pretends not to feel morose in the slightest that he can't have someone feeling him up, digging their fingers into the skin of his back and calling his name out as if searching for something to cling onto. It would probably be nice, he thinks bitterly. 

The sheets are a cold, pale blue like ugly ice and the curtains a tartan he actually feels bad subjecting Sirius to, a little. He stumbles through life with the skill of a toddler and it is most apparent when he wakes up alone and sore in places his mother would faint to think about in a room designed for nothing but functionality, lacking any traces of a careful eye or shrewd attention or anything remotely resembling a knack for design.

Remus shoves aside the thoughts of the slanted bookshelves and the jammed record player collecting dust like a neurotic under his bed and the three dusty cardboard boxes he keeps having to remind himself he's meant to be pretending to want to unpack. 

Instead he sits up. He puts his bare feet on the floor. He walks into the kitchen with a resigned slump collapsing his thin shoulders. He makes coffee. He pours it out in the sink. He walks back to bed. He heaves a heavy sigh from the pit of his chest.

It is by chance or luck or fate, any number of hapless things that seem to be the only reasons for anything to happen, that he finds the note. He sits on it, nearly tossing it away with disdain or perhaps a flippant hand, but the curl of an L and the slashed dot of an I catch him.

He makes little effort in finding his glasses, but he does find them eventually after groping enough to fling them on the floor and add yet another scratch to their foggy face. The cursive is written larger this time, so Remus can read it without asking Marlene, on purpose, with thoughtfulness. He quirks an eyebrow sardonically, contemplating the utter _thoughtlessness_ of leaving your barista alone in bed without even a goodbye blow job.

_I know you don't work on Fridays, but sadly I do. You looked too cute to wake up anyways. I'll bring you lunch during my break though. Here's hoping Indian is alright._

Written at the bottom with careful precision and slants and a light ink smudge, Sirius writes "thanks". It's so small Remus wonders if his eyes are playing tricks on him. He breathes in the smell of the ink and exhales defiantly, proving the universe that he still can despite its best efforts. He supposes he can sacrifice a homemade breakfast for Indian carry out any day. 

—

The air smells like toast and poached eggs and nail polish and their mouths taste a little rotten from the breakfast and the coffee and the kissing; both were disinclined to brush their teeth and risk losing a second with each other. Sirius heaves a loud sigh, after very deliberately turning the wireless off and silencing whatever pop hit was playing. Remus does nothing. When Sirius sighs again Remus stews in the silence for as long as Sirius will allow before he sighs, yet again. 

"Whatever could be the matter Sirius?" Remus asks dryly.

"I can't believe I quoted the Beatles," Sirius laments with so much disdain his toes curl. 

Remus smiles like its the most predictable thing he's heard all day and continues painting his toenails. He thinks they look great, though he's not quite sure Sirius does; they way he seems to be eyeing Remus' progress shrewdly says he's skeptical. 

"It's just not punk rock."

"Right."

"Remus you don't even care."

"Try not to take it personally."

Sirius stills. He's thinking. He's twirling an idea around his mind distractedly, over his knuckles like a coin. 

"If you're visually impaired should you really be painting my nails?"

"Nope," Remus responds easily enough. He mills over the finer points of his so called disability with the kind of absent backwards glance of a thought usually reserved for the laundry or, even more mundane, the dishes. 

"They're going to be lopsided now!" Sirius says as if he cares. He's smiling anyway.

"Perhaps you should've thought of that before asking."

"You're mean."

"At least I text you on a semi regular basis."

There is hesitation in the wobble of Sirius' lips as they form around words that aren't quite sounds. 

"Remus," Sirius begins, eyeing now the tassels of his carpet and the speckled stains on the arm chair and the mangled Ethernet cord with feigned curiosity, "I think I've done something wrong."

Remus marvels that it's taken three long months, multiple spilled drinks, a fantastical mix up with a glass door, four arguments based on misunderstandings, and the accidental backhanding of many a passerby for Sirius to admit that perhaps he has messed up.

"Is it the time you called my mother a handsome lad when you saw her picture or the time you yelled at me for suffocating some hundred odd years ago?"

Sirius reflexively hits Remus with his foot and because Remus is hunched so far over it connects squarely in the nose and sends him into the coffee table. It's surprising and it hurts like hell itself but Remus is more concerned about the nail polish lodged up his right nostril. 

"You kicked me in the nose!" Remus spits out between the gaps of his fingers.

"Okay yes well you may not have deserved quite that," Sirius says flippantly. "Im sorry," he adds softly, mournful and shy in a way Remus knows he's not often.

"I thought you were the one getting their due penance here," Remus says, cupping his nose and the bruise that is blooming a majestic blue and purple right down the center of his face. 

"I was going for a light reprimanding after you brought up those small trivialities and a light kick seemed just the trick though I may have misjudged a few things."

Remus exhales softly and looks at the ruins of Sirius' painted toenails. "I can't say anyone deserves a foot to the nose. And look what you've done to my hard work." He makes a vague motioning to his alleged masterpiece with all the offense he can muster. 

"Yes well another thing to apologize for then. I was going to apologize for being so..." Sirius heaves a breath as if preparing for a dive into ice cold water. He's got the look of a man attempting to swallow a spider whole. He looks avant-garde and abstract sitting as if he's not even sure he belongs on the couch, in this moment. "I'm sorry I don't text so much. I know I wasn't too good about it especially in the beginning and you were dropping hints that it made you anxious but I was always so excited just to see you I got distracted so I'm sorry and I'll try to do better because... insert feelings here... You know the romantic type that'll make you swoon and praise me as a poet when I'm gone. Those kinds of feelings are the reason for all of this in the first place. So just put that... right in there and you've got what I'm saying... Yeah that's it."

Remus doesn't say a thing for a time. Sirius fidgets noticeably and adds, "Please respond. You're killing me. I really mean it I just don't apologize much and it makes me all..."

Remus nods like he understands the feeling of not apologizing much when he actually apologizes for everything, even the things that aren't his fault. He says, "I'm just shocked that the no hand holding, no cuddling Sirius Orion Black Ben warned me about is apologizing for getting too excited about seeing me to remember to text properly."

"Well!" Sirius splutters, "I mean I...! That's not what...!" He stills and looks Remus in the eye for a moment before nodding and mumbling, "Okay maybe it still happens. Sorry." He's sitting delicately on the edge of the couch as if he's on the precipice of something big and terrifying, just waiting to fall and never stop. 

Remus drags himself on to the couch with enough force to knock Sirius over the edge, metaphorically; Sirius remains attached to his side with persistent fervor. 

"Those inserted feelings makes me feel mushy on the inside," Remus says quietly, "Like my body can't control the human form any more and I'm turning to a puddle of goo. You did that to me. How dare you. Bloody bastard you're so cocky I bet you did it on purpose. You just knew if you felt guilty today I'd get down on my knees for you if you asked."

"Do I have to ask politely?" Sirius responds casually.

"Well yes. I'm a gentlemen. But that's besides the point. You've gotten me all tangled and happy and get this I've actually done my résumé. Who knows maybe I'll find work as a programmer after all."

Sirius nearly shoves him off the couch. He's blinking wide and shaking his head. "You're a programmer?"

"Yes...?" Remus says now questioning his own career because of the whole hearted shock he's witnessing transpose Sirius' eyes to those of a child learning they're adopted. 

"I thought you were an, an English Lit person, not a, well, a programmer."

"Why because I read Dickinson? Or because I look boring enough to cause punk rockers such as yourself heart attacks with my conversations on Socratic philosophy?"

Sirius shakes his head as if he's been force fed the news of his own demise. "No. You just don't take everything I say literally."

"Well..." Remus shifts closer to Sirius and tucks his fingers into the sleeves of his jumper. "That's not entirely true. I may have gotten the groceries wrong a few weeks ago not because I forgot but because I thought you were saying get bread only if there is any of the butter you like. So..."

"Get the butter I like and, if there is any, the fresh bread..." Sirius mumbles abstractly with near wistfulness, as if rounding the tale end of a very long thought. He levels his eyes with Remus' before grinning and saying, "I think I'm going to kiss you now."

"Well that certainly wouldn't be too terrible for me."

And so Sirius kisses him and pulls him close and makes promises he'll keep for longer than he knows, that he's been keeping for hundreds of years, and Remus kisses back with the notion that he won't remember anything before or after this point and that's okay.

They kiss at four thirty five on a drizzling Sunday evening with the ease and slow moving churn of two basking in the presence of a long lasting forever that is now rolling right over them. Remus settles his body on top of Sirius' and he can tell this is exactly the time he's meant to be in. He relishes it with senseless need and hands cradling this delicate bit of eternity as carefully as he can, letting none of it slip like the fickle grains of sand in an hour glass. 

He doesn't think he believes in soulmates but maybe there's hope yet in cuddling, hand holding, breakfast making sap Sirius Orion Black.


End file.
